Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (Oil) Heineken Lokpobiri, and an agency under his supervision, the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) have presented Nigerians with contradictory figures on the volume of crude produced by the country.
Lokpobiri, while delivering a keynote speech at an energy summit on Wednesday in Abuja boasted that the country’s crude production has surged to 1.7 million barrels per day.
Ripples Nigeria reports that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) depending on primary data from the NUPRC had pegged Nigeria’s crude production at 1.307mbpd for July, 2024.
Surprisingly, Lokpobiri faulted the data from the NUPRC saying Nigeria’s crude production has surged to 1.7mbpd.
Hear him: “As a ministry, one of the things we have decided to focus on is to ramp up production. Today, we are producing about 1.7 million barrels per day inclusive of condensates.
“I don’t want anybody to be confused. OPEC doesn’t calculate condensates which is why the OPEC quota for Nigeria is 1.5 million barrels.
“Our ambition is to ramp up production. It’s only when we ramp up production that midstream and downstream can succeed. When I became Minister one year ago, we were doing barely 1 million barrels per day of crude oil.
READ ALSO:Local refineries will boost crude production – Lokpobiri
But today, we are doing 1.7 million barrels. And NUPRC is here. They are the ones who traditionally give us the numbers. They are giving us approximately 1.7 million barrels inclusive of condensates,” he boasted.
However, investigations by Ripples Nigeria on the NUPRC’s monthly oil production status report uncovered the apparent and barefaced lie by the Minister.
The NUPRC’s monthly oil production status report captures both the volume of crude and condensate production in any specific month.
According to the report, Nigeria’s crude oil and condensate productions currently stands at 1.53 million barrels per day for the month of July 2024, a whooping 150,000bpd difference from the figure bandied about by the Minister begging the question on where he got his figures from.
According to NURPC, Nigeria’s overall production output as of July 2024 is as follows,
Crude oil: 1,306,657 barrels per day
Blended condensates: 57,143 barrels per day
Unblended condensates: 169,898 barrels per day
Total: 1,533,698 per day
This is a stark difference from the Minister’s 1.7mbpd claims.
See the document below:
By: Babajide Okeowo
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